Gender in youth sports

Overview

In the early 2020s, an estimated 55.4 percent of Americans aged 6 to 17 years played organized sports, although girls continued to participate at a much lower rate than boys (with 41 percent male participation and 35.6 percent female participation). A great deal of research into the topic has found that girls have significantly fewer opportunities to play at the high school and college levels, often facing issues such as a lack of facilities in their neighborhoods or safe transportation options. They also frequently face discrimination based on perceptions that female athletes are gay. Sports provide a range of benefits, including health benefits and opportunities to develop leadership and teamwork skills. Experts say that local and regional organizations can help increase girls’ participation by figuring out which issues are of most concern in their communities and finding ways to remove barriers.

History of Youth Sports

Youth sports in the United States emerged in the late nineteenth century. Increasing industrialization prompted many young men and women to move to urban areas to work in factories and other industries. A movement known as Muscular Christianity promoted the idea that young male workers should develop their minds and bodies. Promotion of national pride and patriotism was another goal.

Recreational sports were believed to be a positive outlet for energy and a way to encourage moral behavior. Such efforts were supported by organizations such as the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), which began in London in 1844 and was founded in Boston, United States, in 1851. These and other groups believed that young workers who moved from rural to urban areas were naïve and needed to be protected from alcoholism and other vices. Initially, organizers focused on physical activities such as running and throwing. In the early twentieth century, team sports such as baseball, basketball, and football became popular. They were encouraged by a society that valued traits such as obedience and self-control and believed that they were lacking among youth.

Opportunities to participate in youth sports in cities expanded rapidly in the first decade of the twentieth century, with groups such as the Public School Athletic League (PSAL) in New York City and city-wide recreation programs across the country. PSAL provided all boys in the city with opportunities for organized sports, including competition among schools. Some sports for girls were available, but female teams competed only within their schools, not against girls at other schools. Many cities have developed playgrounds and sports complexes with facilities for football, hockey, soccer, and other activities.

In the 1920s and 1930s, volunteer organizations began offering organized and recreational sports activities for children, often with financial assistance from community businesses. Among the most well-known and influential were Pop Warner youth football programming, which began in 1929 with four teams in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Little League Baseball, which Carl Stotz founded in 1939. However, some education experts discouraged organized sports for children at the elementary level, arguing that participation had a negative impact on mental and physical development, and many public schools discontinued sports for several decades.

The years following the end of World War II brought the baby boom and the corresponding development of children’s sports sponsored by organizations such as the US Chamber of Commerce. Biddy Basketball, Pony League Baseball, the American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO), the Soccer Association for Youth, the Junior Olympic Fencing Program, and the National Youth Sports Program (NYSP) emerged from the 1940s through the 1960s. Some of these, such as NYSP, were formed to serve disadvantaged children. The growth of organized sports in the twentieth century paralleled the rising fame of professional athletes. Many parents both approved of the character development they felt youth sports fostered and hoped that their children could capture some of the fame and fortune of professional sports if they started participating and building their skills from a young age.

The expansion of organized sports to include girls occurred in the 1970s due to social changes such as more women entering the workforce, court challenges to male-only programs and events, and the landmark Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex in all federally funded education programs and activities, including the protection of pregnant students from discrimination and the ban of sex-based discrimination in schools’ science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses and programs. Administrators quickly realized that it also required schools and universities to fund athletic programs for female students. This legislation coincided with an increased awareness of female athletes excelling in their sports, including multiple Olympic gymnasts and tennis legend Billie Jean King, who famously defeated Bobby Riggs in the highly publicized Battle of the Sexes match. Riggs was a former top male tennis player who boasted that he could beat any female tennis player. The 1973 television broadcast was viewed by more than ninety million people worldwide and remains among the most-watched sporting events in history.

The 1970s also saw changes in sports that had been previously reserved for boys. Little League Baseball was established for boys ages eight to twelve. The organization launched the Little League World Series in 1947. By the 1970s, up to three million boys were participating. Maria Pepe, a little girl in Hoboken, New Jersey, was turned away when she tried to join a local Little League baseball team. The National Organization for Women (NOW) sued the organization for sexual discrimination. The Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, ruled in 1974 in favor of Pepe and NOW.

Further Insights

Multiple issues related to gender in youth sports have been debated and discussed in the public sphere in the early twenty-first century. Among these are whether it is safe and appropriate for girls and boys to be on the same team and compete against one another; if transgender athletes should participate as the gender they identify with or the one they were assigned at birth; and the prevalence of discrimination against LGBTQ+ people.

At the high school level, many young women have begun competing with young men in traditionally male contact sports, including high school football, where some teams have recruited girls as kickers, and wrestling. In 1974, King, who became an advocate for women’s equality, established the Women’s Sports Foundation, which takes the position that prepubescent children should compete on coeducational teams because no physiological reason to separate them exists. All participants should be grouped based on experience and skill. The foundation also supports coed sports competition after puberty using rules that require equal numbers of male and female members on each team, such as in mixed doubles tennis teams, or rules that maximize fair competition, such as in golf, in which male and female players use different teeing-off points. The Women’s Sports Foundation (2019) cites studies showing that members of one sex display more physical differences on average than are seen between males and females. It also notes that Title IX requires schools that do not offer a team for girls in a noncontact sport to give girls a chance to compete on the boys’ team. Courts have said the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution requires that schools permit girls to try out for boys’ contact sports teams if no corresponding girls’ teams exist. In some cases, schools must permit girls to try out for boys’ teams even if girls’ teams exist. However, schools can restrict participation if any athlete’s size, skill, and strength create a possibly hazardous environment.

Courts have also ruled that boys should be allowed to play on girls’ teams if no team for boys is offered in a sport; if total athletic opportunities for boys are underrepresented; and if the boys’ skill and strength levels are comparable to the girls’. However, these rights are not universal because girls were previously discriminated against and boys continue to have more opportunities to compete in sports. The Women’s Sports Foundation (2019) notes that allowing girls to compete on boys’ teams gives them greater opportunities to play with similarly skilled athletes and opens slots on girls’ teams, which permits more girls to participate. Denying girls the opportunity to choose which arena of competition suits their abilities limits their participation, according to the courts.

Increasing girls’ opportunities improves the chance that young athletes will continue to participate in youth sports. They may become discouraged if the quality of their athletic pursuits deteriorates. For example, some facilities for female athletes are inferior, girls’ teams may be relegated to unsatisfactory playing times, funding for equipment and uniforms may be less than what is allocated for boys’ teams, and girls’ teams may not attract experienced and successful coaches. Negative experiences may indicate to female athletes that they are less worthy, and they may no longer enjoy participating. Experts say that once community leaders identify the reasons that children quit or never begin playing sports, they can make and implement plans to address these issues. For example, a parks and recreation board might organize sports sampler events at which children can try out various sports in which they are interested. Recruiting female coaches helps provide role models and shows children that sports can be a lifelong activity.

Discourse

Researchers say that girls often receive messages from the media, peers, and parents that indicate athletes are not feminine, but girls should be. Adolescents who are learning to define themselves may decide that to be feminine, they must quit sports. Some female athletes must also contend with discrimination. They are often perceived as being gay and may be bullied, receive negative performance evaluations, or be socially isolated. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to social stigma such as this and may quit sports.

Society may also be telling girls that boys are more athletic and better at sports, which may discourage girls from pursuing sports. According to a 2020 study (Veliz et al.) for the Women’s Sports Foundation, 32 percent of parents believe that boys are better than girls at sports. Since parents provide the support that athletes need emotionally and financially and make decisions such as how and when children will participate in activities, this belief can have a strong impact on whether children play sports. Parental attitudes and beliefs strongly impact their willingness to invest time and money in pursuit of children’s sports activities. Researchers found that 36 percent of girls and 46 percent of boys were playing youth sports, while 43 percent of girls and 35 percent of boys had never played sports. The average age at which children become involved in sports is six years. Eleven was the average age of children who quit sports. At the high school level, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) reported that participation in sports reached a record 8 million participants in 2023–24, including a record 3.5 million girls—although girls still had fewer total opportunities than boys.

Researchers have found that LGBTQ+ athletes are often discriminated against and targeted for abuse. According to information published by Out on the Fields (2015) and OutSport (2019), among athletes aged fifteen to twenty-one, 51 percent of gay or bisexual males and 35 percent of gay or bisexual females have been the target of homophobic actions while participating in their sport. Often, this comes from the stands. A Human Rights Campaign Foundation study (data collected in 2017 and released in 2018) found that 24 percent of LGBTQ+ youth played on a school sports team in 2017, while 13 percent said they did not play sports at all because they felt they would not be accepted by teammates because of their LGBTQ+ status. Of the young LGBTQ+ athletes, 11 percent said they never felt safe in the locker room. The LGBTQ+ youth sports dropout rate was nearly twice that of non-LGBTQ+ peers.

The same report found that 14 percent of transgender boys and 12 percent of transgender girls played sports. Multiple states and sports organizations have weighed in on transgender youth participating in sports. According to the Movement Advancement Project, by 2026, at least twenty-seven states had laws banning transgender students from participating in teams consistent with their gender identity, and two additional states had such bans through regulation or agency policy. Most of these laws addressed K–12 schools, but some included college in the bans. Many of these same states also passed laws banning or limiting youth access to gender-affirming health care, including puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery.

Some oppose permitting transgender athletes to compete with the gender with which they identify because they believe that transgender athletes may have an advantage over their competitors. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) acknowledged this concern in its 2015 eligibility guidelines. In 2021, however, the IOC replaced those 2015 eligibility guidelines with a broader framework on fairness, inclusion, and non-discrimination, leaving sport-specific rules largely to individual governing bodies rather than imposing a specific testosterone threshold across all sports. The level had to remain below this threshold for the duration of the competition period. Sport governing bodies had previously addressed the issue of testosterone levels in determining whether women with hyperandrogenism, or an elevated level of androgens like testosterone, could compete with female athletes or if they would need to take medication to lower their testosterone levels or compete against men. On February 5, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” directing federal agencies to interpret Title IX in ways aimed at excluding transgender girls and women from female sports categories.

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